Those of you following me on twitter know I tend to spend a bit of time every couple of days in finding new extensions for FireFox (and sometimes Thunderbird) which are making my life as an Information Architect, Web Designer or Project Development Manager easier. These extensions may be some all of us have been using for ages but never really realised we had them installed, or some we really wanted to see or use for some time, but never really spent the time researching whether these extensions are actually available. This is the list of February…
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Web Design
Web Design | Blog on Web Design, API Integration, Web Design Trends & Web design inspiration
RisingStarGames.com is live!
The new website of Rising Star Games, the Japanese publisher with European roots, has just been put live.
The website features a lot of new content, from news, game profiles and blogs over to forums, user profiles, members exclusive content and more! Plus, the sushi bar concept is working really nicely and displays latest information from the blog, the forum, news and upcoming releases
The website was designed and developed by Melon Design & Marketing on their in-house CMS Engine.
Visit RisingStarGames.com
Happy days!!! 😀
Top tips for working with developers
Working in a busy office is one of the best parts of being a designer or information architect – you can bounce off ideas, discuss projects with others and get their input, and you can generally have a good laugh.
That is until the time comes where a new project is being started or requirements are being updated. Usually then some sort of “rivalry” will ensue, and in 90% of the cases it will be between a designer or information architect and a developer or development coordinator. Scope was not fully explained or defined, the design is too complicated to build, or data is not coming from the sources it was meant to.
In those times frustration can quickly result in stress and lack of commitment to a project. Let’s see what we would do to remedy that…
WhatwasIthinking.co.uk – relaunched!
Whatwasithinking.co.uk has been around for almost a year, and in time for its first birthday I thought I’d take the opportunity and rethink what I actually want to do with it. So I chose to make two drastic changes:
- Add SEO as a category – because I am now working a lot more with SEO consultants and do a bit of SEO for clients myself (which is working out really well already) this just needed to happen sooner or later
- Rethink the design – the previous theme I based on a theme by C.Frazier worked well, but it turned out to be very limiting, especially with WordPress 2.7 having added a lot more commenting functions and a very functional interface
So in the end I chose to go for a theme by Vladimir Prelovac. The theme is very modern, has a wonderful layout and after a bit of hacking it tracks pingbacks and tweetbacks successfully. If you want to know more about the theme or Vladimir then please click here (and if you want to follow him, click here).
Please let me know what you think about the theme 🙂
Melon Design & Marketing’s new website is live!
I am happy to announce that the new site of Melon Design & Marketing has gone live today!!
Melon Design & Marketing is a creative communication agency based near Milton Keynes, between Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, specialising in a number of sectors such as branding & corporate identity, graphic design, website design & development, advertising and e-marketing, print management, photography and copywriting.
You can read more about all their services here, and about their in-house CMS Engine on this page.
How to invoice for design work – a quick guide
So you have finally done it, you are a freelancer or have set up your own little design agency and you have your first clients with jobs coming in. And now comes the time that a project comes to the point where money is involved, be it just before the first 1/3 of the project is done or towards the end of the project. But what do you need to look out for? Where to go for resources if anything goes wrong?
Continue reading after the break for some strategies on how to invoice for your web design or web development work…
On link usability – the art of keeping call to actions consistent
Not so long ago I was asked by a client, if it was possible to change a couple of sections within their site as they just updated their product structure: the client was expanding their products to list two more categories. To make them stand out, their marketing team was thinking of using different colours throughout the main content area so that is looks much more consistent, which included changing all link colours and buttons to these new colours.
As a designer you have probably faced a similar situation before – can I or can I not change the link colours on certain pages to keep a consistent look and feel?